Stockpiled Fescue

[dun]

One of the keys to endophyte is adapted cattle and then keeping your own heifers and on and on.

That is the most important key, animals that are adapted to fescue at your farm or at least your area. The only fescue seed we sow is fescue that is gathered on the mower when we bale or the brushhog when we brushhog the stuff to keep it vegative for stockpiling in the fall.

 

[WarEagle73]

Interested in how this stock piling affects your stocking rates. The only way I could stock pile is if I pulled my cows off toward fall and fed hay then instead of in winter. Are most of you making a first cutting of hay and stockpiling the second cutting? Soil compaction in winter? Do most of you have flat ground you run? I am interested in cutting cost, but I am finding hard to wrap my brain around it with my terrain and climate unless I cut my stocking rate in half.

The field in the video is grazed probably 3-5 times during the year. Always with the strip grazing or MIG, whatever term you want to use. In August it was grazed tight, then late September we put 60 units of N on it. Left it until Thanksgiving.

Typically, we wean in August. We will use the cows and calves to tightly graze this "stockpile" field and a warm season field that we plant ryegrass on. That leaves about a third of the farm to graze in the fall. Usually we will pull them off all the grass for 20-40 days in the fall and feed our poorer hay to the dry, fat cows while we allow more time to stockpile. As they start calving they go on to the stockpile. We went from feeding 3-4 bales per head per year, to less than 2. We are cutting down some timber so make more pasture. If we cut the stocking rate by 10-15% we could likely go 365 with out hay on a decent year.

 

[Tim/South]

Not all K31 fescue contains the ergot endophyte. That is why it took decades for the endophyte to be detected. The only real way to know is to have the seeds tested.
We are having very good results the the MaxQ endophyte friendly fescue.
There is also K31 marketed as low endophyte. The seeds are combined from fields with little harmful endophyte.

 

[talltimber]

Banjo, I have a hard time wrapping my head around how a guy would rotational graze and never have to worry about fescue going to seed (making seed heads which are highest in the endophyte). I have been told by a local fella that he intensive grazes ("like the buffalo's did"), they only pick it once a year, according to him, and I just can't imagine how that could be that his cattle "are never on fescue with the heads on it" and he never bush hogs?? Would have an idea? When I asked him he muttered something about "you got to keep them moving"? :lol2:

Not sure I understand the question. Fescue only heads out one time a year, if it does after that its only minimal seedheads. After the spring flush you don't have to worry about it, unlike other grasses such as crabgrass, ryegrass, and one that I have here called caucasion bluestem, they are just constantly trying to head out over and over. I'm not sure if I could pick my whole farm just once per year, but I am more like 3 to 5 times. One of the keys to endophyte is adapted cattle and then keeping your own heifers and on and on.

Sorry. Let me try again. I am wanting to know if you, or anyone reading this, can answer this question.

How do you intensive graze, do not graze one paddock more than once a year, do no bush hogging, and avoid cattle grazing fescue that has headed out?

 

[Banjo]

Banjo, I have a hard time wrapping my head around how a guy would rotational graze and never have to worry about fescue going to seed (making seed heads which are highest in the endophyte). I have been told by a local fella that he intensive grazes ("like the buffalo's did"), they only pick it once a year, according to him, and I just can't imagine how that could be that his cattle "are never on fescue with the heads on it" and he never bush hogs?? Would have an idea? When I asked him he muttered something about "you got to keep them moving"? :lol2:

Not sure I understand the question. Fescue only heads out one time a year, if it does after that its only minimal seedheads. After the spring flush you don't have to worry about it, unlike other grasses such as crabgrass, ryegrass, and one that I have here called caucasion bluestem, they are just constantly trying to head out over and over. I'm not sure if I could pick my whole farm just once per year, but I am more like 3 to 5 times. One of the keys to endophyte is adapted cattle and then keeping your own heifers and on and on.

Sorry. Let me try again. I am wanting to know if you, or anyone reading this, can answer this question.

How do you intensive graze, do not graze one paddock more than once a year, do no bush hogging, and avoid cattle grazing fescue that has headed out?

I really don't know either, unless the person you mentioned is bringing in a lot of cows or stockers to help him eat down and trample the fescue before it gets fully mature. Its the completely brown ripe seedheads that are the worst from what I understand. Fescue headed out and still green is not so much a problem.
If he grazes like the buffalo.....sooner or later the buffalo had to run into mature grass.
Also, mature grass is not the bad stuff its often made out to be, I still have lots of green blades and clover down in the undergrowth when my fields get 'too far along'.
Here's a article I posted a while back that I thought was interesting about mature grass.

http://www.learningace.com/doc/4281604/ ... 08_salatin

 

[Ebenezer]

What % of your current stocking rate is there to pay for hay and commercial fertilizer? Starter question.

No haying here: economics.

Wet winter or very wet spells: a lot of plugging. Replant with good legume seeds and go on. Slopes from 1% to 20%.

More economics for me than maximizing animal production in various options.

Location? What is your stocking rate?

Piedmont area of SC within about 30 miles from either Clemson or Greenville. Stocking rate with cow/calf pairs, sheep, guard donkeys, replacement heifers, visiting deer herds is about 2.5 acres per cow/calf pair plus others. If the deer would go away I could probably carry 2 or 3 extra cow/calf pairs!

 

[Ebenezer]

Stockpiling is what folks do when they are conventional grazers. They set aside a hayfield or any field and keep the cows off of it till Nov. or Dec.
We used to do that all the time before we went to IRG/MIG/HSDG what ever you prefer to call it.

We do both but for different reasons. Warm season grasses are grazed by rotation in the whole pasture. Long cycles on warm season grasses allow forage quality to drop and cattle performance to drop, too. So moves are made both on current grazing heights, drought conditions and next pasture quantity. This effort if for the good of the forage and the animals. Vary too much on either side of the balance and things go bad. Know your forages and know your animals and balance.

Cool season fescue mix is grazed by strip grazing to increase efficiency of harvest.

How do you intensive graze, do not graze one paddock more than once a year, do no bush hogging, and avoid cattle grazing fescue that has headed out?

You don't. One of our grazing rotations is for them to eat the mature seedheads. To be even more confusing this is during breeding season. So a lot of endophytes consumed during breeding season! We leave the stems afterwards, speaking of buffalo and old ways, because the dead stems create a microclimate near the surface. It allows less wind to hit growing forage to dry it and the soil out, it increases dew, it allows limited protection from sun and I have mowed strips just to see. Mowed strips will wither and quit growing long before the standing stem areas. Don't believe it, try it. And endophyte levels: we tested at 90%+ in all locations. Endophyte free fescue will act more like ryegrass: here and gone. Friendly endophyte needs more careful management if it works for you but will not equal old KY31 on yield.

One of the keys to endophyte is adapted cattle and then keeping your own heifers and on and on.

Amen, brother. The key is the right genetics and breeding the ones that work. Keep the best and eat the rest. Watch the hair coats and you will be a long way toward better times. Also study up on minerals, encourage legumes, have good water and provide some shade. And we have no surface water for cattle to cool in. You cannot stare cattle for needed minerals on fescue.

 

[Banjo]

Stockpiling is what folks do when they are conventional grazers. They set aside a hayfield or any field and keep the cows off of it till Nov. or Dec.
We used to do that all the time before we went to IRG/MIG/HSDG what ever you prefer to call it.

We do both but for different reasons. Warm season grasses are grazed by rotation in the whole pasture. Long cycles on warm season grasses allow forage quality to drop and cattle performance to drop, too. So moves are made both on current grazing heights, drought conditions and next pasture quantity. This effort if for the good of the forage and the animals. Vary too much on either side of the balance and things go bad. Know your forages and know your animals and balance.

It sounds like you have pastures of WSG's and paddocks of fescue is that correct or not? Here it all grows together with WSG's coming in about june where the fescue is thinner.

How do you intensive graze, do not graze one paddock more than once a year, do no bush hogging, and avoid cattle grazing fescue that has headed out?

You don't. One of our grazing rotations is for them to eat the mature seedheads. To be even more confusing this is during breeding season. So a lot of endophytes consumed during breeding season! We leave the stems afterwards, speaking of buffalo and old ways, because the dead stems create a microclimate near the surface. It allows less wind to hit growing forage to dry it and the soil out, it increases dew, it allows limited protection from sun and I have mowed strips just to see. Mowed strips will wither and quit growing long before the standing stem areas. Don't believe it, try it. And endophyte levels: we tested at 90%+ in all locations. Endophyte free fescue will act more like ryegrass: here and gone. Friendly endophyte needs more careful management if it works for you but will not equal old KY31 on yield.

I would tend to agree with that statement. I left a pasture last year untouched by the bushhog after grazing it and it was noticeably better than what was mowed. Although I still have this urge to mow/clip my pastures sometimes...bushhogging tends to leave the refuse in a windrow and will choke out the grass in those spots

 

[Bigfoot]

I've been fencing all winter, with the intention of making more rotations. All 5 strand barbed wire. If a wanted to pull an electric fence down the middle of each field, that would double my rotations. I hate an electric fence like Sylvester hates tweety though so I doubt that happens. I hope to stock pile more fescue this year. If I do, I guess I better get over my hatred of electric fences, and strip graze what I stockpile. I'm hoping to save my self at least 6 weeks of feeding hay. That'd be 120-140 rolls. We'll see.